It's Because of the Battle of Kosovo
(So-Called Expert, Part 2)
Milos Obilic, Serbian hero who sacrificed his life by making his way into the Ottoman camp during the Battle of Kosovo, on the pretext of being a deserter, forced his way into the Sultan's tent and stabbed him to death in the midst of his massive entourage.
Of course people have the right to their opinion. Even if that opinion is entirely based on the merciless anti-Serbian propaganda spread in the West through Ustashi and Muslim lobbies and their employee, PR agency Ruder Finn (it was Slovenians and Croats who have subscribed to the services of Ruder Finn first, in the 1991 and 1992. Since their anti-Serbian campaign was a smashing hit in the West for which it was intended in the first place, both Bosnian and Kosovo Muslims hired the same agency a little bit later during the wars). Serbs have paid dearly for refusing to hire the services of the same high-end liars when they were offered for $80.000 a year, naively believing everyone can see what is happening. So, after Ustashi and Muslims have funnelled millions of dollars into Demonize the Serbs Campaign, it is not a big surprise every car dealer and shoe salesmen in the West hates Serbs, feeling he knows exactly what really went on in the civil wars of the 90's. But when Dick of the BudgetCarDealership and Billy of PayLessShoes start regurgitating Ruder Finn's lies as their own 'expert analysis', that turns into a straw that brakes the camel's back.
IGNORAMUS #2 A Canadian variety, owner of a web site with thousands of pages on just about everything under the sun, but mostly about religion and politics. This guy doesn't seem to have much expertise on anything, save for some obscure awards he applies for regularly and keeps receiving in exchange for the link back, but he deems himself an "essayist" and has filled hundreds of pages with endless, boring-to-death, patronizing "essays" in which he pours his overwhelming wisdom that has to be poured out somewhere, otherwise he might burst.
One of his "essays" caught my attention: it is a quasi-psychological, quasi-philosophical, quasi-historical pile of bilge explaining to the world Serbian collective psychology and history. At the core of this endless idiocy authored by I-Wish-I-Knew-What-I'm-Talking-About Bruce is his claim Serbs are psychologically marked for eternity by "the lost" 1389 Battle of Kosovo, so the wars in former Yugoslavia were in effect led because of this Battle that took place 600 years ago. The best part is that the bulk of his references listed at the bottom (when you, eventually, manage to reach the bottom) are Ustasha and terrorist KLA sites which specialize in offering such a distorted and mangled picture of Serbia and its history that it becomes entirely unrecognizable.
Bruce is a dangerous man, the kind of mega-ignoramus who thinks he should preach and teach: no one will let him do it anywhere in real life, so he does it from the virtual pulpit he has set up for himself. He's dumb as a doorbell, but he believes himself to be sharper than most of the ordinary folk out there, for unlike everybody else he gets right through to the very essence of the problem; it would take him quite a while to find Serbia on a world map (starting from Africa), but he believes he's quite an expert on the area, because he read about it on Albanian terrorist sites; he would turn into a pillar of salt if he was asked to name one church in Kosovo or say something about the formation of Serbian state, but he prides himself on reading Ustasha accounts of Battle of Kosovo and feels he could write a textbook on Serbian history.
The 1389 Battle of Kosovo wasn't lost for the Serbs -- it was a draw, since both Serbian Tsar Lazar and Ottoman Sultan Murat were killed. But being that this is a common mistake and historical inaccuracy most Westerners keep repeating since Austro-Hungarians started spreading the fear of "Greater Serbia" (their own bourgeois fantasy, used to plant the seed of fear and hatred between Croats and Serbs), I'm willing to overlook this one. Still, Bruce should learn, since he's so eager to write essays on Serbian history, that even though Serbs were outnumbered by 10-1, they fought so heroically and with such resolve, that the bells of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris rang out in their honor and Ottomans praised them as "a worthy opponent". Because of the courage they have shown in the battle in which entire Serbian aristocracy sacrificed "for the Honorable Cross and Golden Freedom", Serbs have retained their statehood for another two centuries, before being annexed by ruthless Osman Empire.
An average Serbophobe will undoubtedly decide it's an overstatement, but the fact of the matter is that Braveheart is a schoolyard brawl in comparison to the 1389 Battle of Kosovo, only no Hollywood producer will ever finance the filming of that piece of Christian history. So, dust off your history books and learn about Orthodoxy on the front lines of jihad, self-sacrifice and honor, before producing another pile of gibberish.
Apart from that: where did Bruce The Essayist get an idea 14th century Kosovo Battle is the key event, most closely connected to the civil wars of the 90's? Has nothing happened between the 14th and the end of 20th century?! So, there was this Battle 600 years ago which Bruce thinks Serbs lost and THEN, all of a sudden, because they "lost" this battle, Serbs decided to attack Croats, Bosnian and Albanian Muslims -- is that how it went?! Serbs can only wish they had it that easy!
First, there were Serbian uprisings in the 18th and 19th centuries to free from Turks which Serbs, as is obvious, won (otherwise, we'd be greeting each other with Selam aleykum and speaking Turkish now - NOT! Serbs have kept their faith, language and national identity intact during 500 years of Ottoman oppression and brutal attempts at forced conversion). Then there were the First and Second Balkan wars in which Albanians, again, allied themselves with Turks, promising to "manure the plains of Kosovo with Serbian bones." (They are still working on the same plan.) Then came the First World War in which Serbia allied itself with Russia, Greece, Italy and France, against mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire (whose allies were, among others, Croats and Slovenians), Germany, Bulgaria and Albania. Serbia has lost the third of its population in this war and Serbs were hailed as "the small nation that has darkened the glory of the ancient Sparta" in France, States and most of the Western world. Then came the Second World War in which Serbs again fought on the side of old allies, including USA and Great Britain. In WWII Serbia lost another third of its population, almost half of which were killed by Croat Usashi and another half by Bosnian and Albanian Islamofascists who were Hitler's trusted allies. Even though Serbia was freed from German occupation, her treacherous Western allies betrayed her in the end, handing the rule over Serbia to a Croat communist, Josip Broz.
Now, after all that, how did it happen that Serbs suddenly decided to attack and invade, for the first time in their entire history, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and their own region of Kosovo and Metohija? Well, they didn't. They neither attacked anyone, nor could they "invade" the lands in which they lived for centuries: all Serbs wanted in the nineties, when their old enemies united with their old deceitful allies in order to destroy Yugoslavia and re-colonize the Balkans, was to remain in their multicultural, multiconfessional state, and not become subjects in the newly formed Neo-Nazi Croatia or Muslim Bosnia run by Shari'a (no one argued against Slovenian secession; since Slovenia was already ethnically clean, Serbs didn't care one way or the other where they go. The only thing that actually happened in Slovenia wasn't a war by anyone's standards, but Slovenians killing Yugoslav army conscripts on the border and shooting at unarmed army conscripts in retreat). To their own detriment, Serbs also were not willing to sit and watch Western/Al-Qaida subsidized Albanian terrorists ambushing and killing policemen, city mayors, 18 year old army conscripts and civilians in Serbian own state, just like no other country in the world would. Unlike most other countries in the world, though, for daring to oppose foreign armed insurgency and terrorism in their own land, Serbs were mercilessly bombed for 78 days by German Luftwaffe (yet again), Americans, Brits and the rest of the "friends" from the West.
The sad truth is that, while Serbs were undefeated on each of the battlefields fighting for their own survival, they lost the even more fierce propaganda war miserably. And Bruce the Self-Styled Expert is nothing but an annoying reflection of that defeat.